Author
Topic: G'day from the burning west (Read 1183 times)

Howdy there! I'm a thirty year old high school educated minimum wage earning father of two. I have been reading this forum for a little while now, and found it a fantastic and fascinating way to avoid working. Also, I've read recently that a nation's social dysfunction goes up when religious faith goes up, and since I live in a secular nation that has semi extreme christian politics and heavy catholic religious education in state schools, I should probably try and save the country before my kids get to school age.

I'll warn you all now, I have strong and uninformed opinions that will crumble the instant they are proved wrong. I'm not afraid to tell someone they are stupid, and I'm not afraid to tuck my tail between my legs and eat a big ass slice of humble pie. Since I was a teenager and realized I know everything, the only way I've ever learnt is by being proven wrong.

I have a background of minor church affiliation and sunday school shenanigans. I read the Hobbit and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest and the bible at about the same time in my youth, and I have to say that the bible was the crappiest fantasy story I've ever read. You couldn't get a publisher to touch that with a ten foot pole in this day and age. That experience pretty much convinced me that if there is a God, he cannot be the God in the bible. In my human quest to explain the universe I moved into occultism and metaphysics and have tried everything from blood and Ouija boards to levitating and LSD, and then I found Carl Sagan.

Oh, Carl Sagan.

His poetic ruminations about the cosmos made me wish I had paid more attention in physics, and motivated me to make science my bitch. I began reading history and psychology and anything I could get my hands on to begin to piece together in my frail biped brain the answer that we all ultimately seek;

What the hell is going on here?

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"Science changes it's views based on what's observed; Religion ignores the facts so that faith may be preserved."